Part of the STS International team stands outside their new
offices at 4695 Chabot.

By Nicole Zaro Stahl
NETWORK Editor

Since the inception of the Internet in the early 1990s, every major enterprise in the world has found it “necessary and beneficial” to implement a private network for its own operations, observes Benjamin Stockton, a founder and the Chairman of STS International Inc. and Managing Director of its overseas subsidiaries.

“STS is one of the advanced technology companies providing solutions to these enterprises,” Stockton continues. Its extensive portfolio of advanced IT services includes engineering, configuration, deployment, and post-installation support. As an illustration of its broad range of IT expertise, Stockton references a client, “one of the top three networking technology manufacturers,” for which STS performs over 800 activities worldwide per week, including 150 new equipment installations. “We recently deployed network technology and video conferencing equipment in 18 client offices in 18 countries around the world to implement a new service for their internal use,” he says.

The Hacienda newcomer has been very successful carrying out its mission, enjoying a 219 percent growth in topline revenue on a global basis since 2010.

Significant expansion worldwide—Australia, India, the U.K., and Belgium, in particular—sparked the need for more services in the company’s Tri-Valley headquarters. Enlarging the leased offices in Dublin was not feasible, so in its 20th anniversary year, STS decided to give itself a special present: the purchase of a new corporate facility. After a careful search, followed by a month-long remodel, 23 employees moved into new offices on the ground floor of Park Plaza at 4695 Chabot Drive on August 26.

In addition to growing room, the Hacienda headquarters creates the opportunity to bring together business functions—accounting, marketing, Internet operations, and sales, among others--previously based in southern California and San Jose. The consolidation not only offers financial economies but improves the company’s ability to meet client needs, according to Stockton.

In keeping with STS’s role as a technology guru, the headquarters is equipped with two new video-conference rooms to keep global teams in close contact while cutting down on costly and time-consuming travel. The rooms will also host operations, executive, and board meetings, as well as provide the setting for pre-sales and technical presentations for prospects and clients. Another frequent use will be internal training on operational consistency, an important strategy in achieving the corporate goal of “behaving as one seamless global delivery team.”

Stockton notes that the Hacienda location offers a plethora of benefits for both the company and its employees, from adjacency to clients to the ease of commuting and an amenity-filled lifestyle. “There are so many wonderful factors about the community that make us want to stay in the area,” Stockton comments. “We are a very modern and enlightened employer, in terms of the compensation, benefits, and training we offer to our staff, so our new location is very important to us.”

Initially STS is occupying only about two-thirds of its 16,800-square-foot owned space, the remainder of which is currently leased to other tenants. However, at present growth rates, over the next three to five years the company expects to fill the whole floor with an employee population of 60. Worldwide, the total headcount already exceeds 1,000, about 350 of whom are based in the United States. Also in August, STS opened a new 22,000-square-foot facility in Bangalore, India, to support large projects there.